r/Standup • u/Dramatic-Slip9728i • 1d ago
What to study if you start from scratch?
I'm amazed at how comedians can transform real-life events into something that makes everyone laugh.
I wonder what you actually have to study to become like them?
Some of my friends have never studied, but it just comes naturally to them.
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u/wildy_the_lion 1d ago
There are books and workshops teaching techniques that many find helpful
But ultimately learning standup from a book is a lot like trying to learn to swim by watching a YouTube tutorial
Ultimately you just gotta get in the water!
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u/casinodeathstar 1d ago
Ultimately
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u/wildy_the_lion 1d ago
I feel like Adam Bloom would include my post in his book as a good example of the kind of word repetition to avoid
In my defense I was sitting on a busy, noisy and very hot metro to work when I typed this, very distracted
Ultimately I should have proof-read it though
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u/Bubbly_Attention_916 1d ago edited 1d ago
Greg Dean's step by step. Judd Apatow'ss first Sick in the head Mike Sacks's poking The Dead Frog Kliph Nesteroff's The Comedians
Steve Martin has a good one If you can get a hold of Steve Allen.
Read up on Comedia del Arte. Watch lots of specials. Comedy Centrals has the 20 mins from the 90s and thousands up on YouTube. Go to the club and tape your toe to the rhythm.
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u/CptPatches 1d ago
There's a science to it and an art to it.
The science to it is to figure out the skeleton of a joke. Think of a funny thing that happened to you. Figure out how to tell it with setups and punchlines. Figure out how to add tags inside those setups. Experiment. Fail. Repeat.
Watch comics you like. Famous comics and locals at your mic. Pay attention to what they do. Pay attention to how they change jokes they repeat over time. When you get on stage, think about your stage presence. Think about how you can not just tell your jokes but how you can bring your audience in on them.
Don't think about how to be like other people. Think about how to be like a comedic version of yourself.
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u/Dramatic-Slip9728i 11h ago
Thanks, so i'm actually interested in the science of it.
I can learn the rest from life
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u/myqkaplan 1d ago
Study yourself.
There is no class or book or field of study that is necessary to become a comedian. The only thing you need to do is start writing and performing.
And for basically every comedian that it "comes naturally" to, they are also putting in a lot of time and hard work into their act as well.
So, if you want to do comedy, start writing and going to open mics.
Good luck!
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u/Faceless_213 1d ago
I think its just "study them all." I grew up watching every standup comedian I could see. George Carlin was my favorite when I was like 10 lol. I watched every late night comedian even though they are all so fucking cringe now. SNL monologues are good too. If you are looking for guys who do real life events? That's most comedians. Dave Chappelle, Doug Stanhope, and Ali Siddiq are some of my favorite storytellers. But, also, I fell its important to understand short, one-liners too. Steven Wright, Mitch Hedberg, etc. This will help you writing tags that you can sprinkle in your longer form stuff. In fact, if you are just starting out, you might want to avoid full-on storytelling. Many small crowds and bars don't know you and don't give a shit if you take more than 20 seconds to deliver a punchline. I personally dislike crowdwork, so I avoid that... but, there are times the audience doesn't really give you that choice lol. So, learn from them too.
But, yeah: short answer: you can learn a lot from all types of comedians.
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u/shadowmib 1d ago
There's a lot of how how to be a stand-up comic books out there. There's one called The comedy Bible which I've heard recommended a bit.
This is a gross oversimplification but basically what you do is write a bunch of jokes that you hope people will find. Funny, memorize them as best you can, but keep a cheat sheet handy with reminders about parts of the jokes so you don't get up there and draw a blank, then find a local open mic show and go sign up and try it out. If people think you're funny, tweet your jokes a little bit and come back and try them again to see if that that made them funnier or not. Add in new jokes to replace jokes that don't get much response.
If you bomb and people think you suck, same advice as above, go back again. Try the same jokes, if they don't get laughs again, replace them with different jokes until they do.
Once you have refined and practice your 5-m set That gets consistent. Come up with new material for another 5 minutes. Repeat that until you can put them all together and have 15 or 20 minutes that knock people out.
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u/presidentender flair please 4h ago
"Study" is mostly gibberish. I like Greg Dean's book, Step by Step to Standup Comedy, because it gives you a repeatable process to start writing jokes. You can take or not take a class.
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u/RateLegitimate5472 3h ago
Wow, how funny my entire act almost all my bits are about my life and that’s already pretty funny. It’s awesome when a joke materializes from it. The hard part is the joke writing without taking from my life. Idk why but it always feels like…. Stupid when I try to write from like made up senarios to make a joke but most comedy is based on bs. Just trying to make people laugh. I forget we CAN LIE.
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u/DanHuso 1d ago
Just remember that the audience did not experience the event firsthand. They have no point of reference other than what you give them. So you can't just rely on any situation being inherently funny. You need to work for every single laugh.